Convicts, Criminals, Prisoners, and Outlaws: A Course in Popular Storytelling

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of an experimental course, Law and Popular Story Telling, taught at the University of Connecticut School of Law during spring semesters of 1990 and 1991. The course seemed to tap a deep energy in the students, as if it were filling an important and unmet need in the upper-level law school curriculum. The students’ own insights form the central portion of the essay. Let me first, however, sketch the origins of the course and distinguish it from other course in Law and Literature or Law and Popular Culture.

Keywords: popular storytelling, teaching lawyering skills, movies, film, pop culture